Slant beds for chucker and bar machines have been available for some time. The primary object of the slant bed is to provide a means for moving the chips away from the tooling during machining operation. The slant bed allows the chips to fall downwardly into some type of a receiver where they can be removed either automatically by a conveyor system or periodically by removing a receptacle which contains chips and dumping the receptacle or otherwise removing the chips which have been caught in the support bed of the machine.
Various beds have been made but they have structural limitations as to the angle of the bed and the bulk in order to give reasonably accurate control. If the angle is too steep, the distribution of weight becomes critical and there is a considerable cantilever affect which can cause inaccuracies in machining. If the angle is too flat, the operator will be further away from the work area and in some instances have difficulty in access because of the need to reach into certain areas of the machine housing. Also, if the angle is too flat, chips are unable to fall downward into the receptacle.
Accuracy has in the past been limited by slant bed designs because of torque and cantilever effect. To counteract distortion of the bed, complex beds had to be designed to make the machine tools comparable with the flat bed machine tools. Also, for the sake of rigidity, weight was increased. This resulted in additional cost for material and handling of same.